Many, perhaps most, federal employees do not donate money to political campaigns. The general view of government employees is that they prefer Democrats over Republicans as they benefit economically by having more money allocated for government spending. The more money there is to spend, the more money there is for salaries and benefits and those responsible for allocating or overseeing the spending grow in importance in society.

Is that true? Do government employees, or federal employees in particular, prefer Democrats over Republicans?

We do not know how people vote in elections. But, as far as political contributions go, there are statistics available. The Department of State has been the most politically active in 2015 and 2016 with most of the money going to Democrats. The Department of the Treasury, which includes the Internal Revenue Service, comes in second.

Other agencies also contribute the vast majority of their money to Democrats.

Here is how federal employees have chosen to spend money in political campaigns in 2015-2016:

Agency

Democrats

Republicans

Department of State

$299,224

$24,241

U.S. Postal Service

$162,645

$112,840

Department of the Treasury

$170,897

$1925

Department of Justice

$137,603

$14,939

Department of Veterans Affairs

$118,834

$36,738

Department of Health & Human Services

$139,483

$12,319

Department of Energy

$120,271

$14,377

The Center for Responsive Politics provides the data which are collected by the Federal Election Commission. The data were released by the FEC on April 16, 2016. There were not other individual federal agencies listed. Presumably, these are the agencies with the largest number of political contributions from federal employees.

About the Author

Ralph Smith has several decades of experience working with federal human resources issues. He has written extensively on a full range of human resources topics in books and newsletters and is a co-founder of two companies and several newsletters on federal human resources. Follow Ralph on Twitter: @RalphSmith47